The Kirilov Star (16 page)

But Yuri Nikolayevich Andropov wasn’t at either of them. ‘
Ewo nyeto
,’ they were told at each one. ‘Not here.’

‘Can I look at the children?’ Lydia asked. ‘He may have been admitted under a different name.’

The woman shrugged and conducted her to the nursery where dozens of small babies were lying in rows of cots. Some of them were asleep, some crying, all were painfully thin. The stench of urine-soaked nappies and stale milk caught in their throats. If Lydia had not been so absorbed in looking for Yuri among them, she would have been filled with pity for these little scraps of lost humanity. But Yuri was not among them.

‘Why do you think he may have another name?’ Alex asked, as they left.

‘Because everyone would assume he belonged to Olga and she would not have told them any different, even supposing she was conscious enough to do so. Her name was Nahmova and that would be on her papers.’

She would not, could not, stop and insisted on walking about the city, a city obviously preparing for war, searching, searching, looking at every baby being carried or pushed in a pram, much to the annoyance of the child’s mother. She was exhausted, but still she dragged herself along. When she could no longer put one foot in front of the other and night was drawing in, Alex took her to the best hotel he could find and sent for a doctor.

‘She needs rest,’ the man told Alex after he had examined her. ‘I will give her something to make her sleep. As for the child, I suggest you try the children’s allocation centre. It’s on the edge of the forest just out of town. They decide what is to be done with parentless children.’

Alex thanked him and paid him, then went back to Lydia and sat by her bed until she slept. Then he lay down beside her and drew her towards him, nestling her back into his stomach.

He lay awake for hours, listening to her breathing, heard the little cries she made occasionally in her sleep and soothed her with murmured words of love, hoping her subconscious absorbed them. Tomorrow they would try the allocation centre, but even if Yuri were there, how could they convince the authorities that Lydia was his mother? It would almost certainly have been assumed Olga was. He was too tired himself to plan that far ahead. It was almost dawn when he drifted off to sleep.

The allocation centre knew nothing of a baby survivor of the station explosion under any name. Undeterred, Lydia continued scouring every orphanage within miles, every charitable home for lost and parentless children and all in vain. Yuri had vanished. Her misery, frustration and anger filled her to such an extent she could think of nothing else. She cried a lot, snapped at Alex when he tried to talk reasonably to her, was sorry for it afterwards and wept on his shoulder. He was unfailingly patient with her. Dear, faithful Alex, who loved her. He demonstrated it in everything he did for her, holding her in her tantrums and her bouts of despair, gently persuading her to eat, suggesting new avenues of search which all turned out to be abortive, making sure she kept clear of the NKVD and fielding enquiries being made about her.

More and more troops arrived in Minsk as German troops swept over Poland. Britain issued an ultimatum to Germany to withdraw, which was ignored, resulting in a
declaration of war. The Poles put up a spirited resistance but, assailed on all sides, they were forced to admit defeat and by early October Poland had been divided up between Germany and Russia. It put an end to Alex’s plans to take Lydia and Yuri out of the country overland.

‘I think we should go back to Moscow,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve contacts there. If Yuri has been evacuated east with all the other orphan children, there must be records somewhere. We would do better to look for him that way. It is better than this aimless searching we have been doing.’

She didn’t want to go and it took all his persuasive powers, but what he said made sense and in the end she agreed.

He took her to the Metropol that first night back, but hotels cost money and he had used much of what he had brought with him in retrieving the Kirilov Star; if they were to spend more than a few days in the city, they needed something a little cheaper. He found them a tiny one-roomed apartment in a large building which had been converted into a
kommunalka
, a house for communal living looked after by a
dvornik
, a sort of
doorman-cum-odd-job
man, who watched everyone coming and going and reported irregularities to the police. Lydia was always polite when she could not avoid him, but most of the time kept out of his way.

Some of the rooms housed large families, or even two families, who were expected to make their beds wherever they could: under the stairs, in cupboards, on the living room floor. Because of Alex’s rank which, luckily, no one questioned, they had a room to themselves and a proper bed, though they had to share the kitchen with nine other families, who each had their own small space containing a
cooker and a few pots and pans. The bathroom was even worse; there was a pitted bath with a dirty tidemark round the middle which could not be cleaned, though Lydia tried, a basin and a lavatory pan which stank. The water was rarely hot enough for a proper bath. The whole building reeked of boiled cabbage and drying laundry.

In those squalid surroundings, she and Alex made love for the first time. Nothing that had gone before was anything like the soaring emotions he aroused in her. She was at once uninhibited and shy, giving way to the utmost sensual pleasure, exploring his body and making him groan with pleasure and then stopping for him to return the compliment, until she could stand it no more and begged him to enter her, now, at once. But it was not only the sex, it was the way they fitted together, like two spoons in a drawer, liking the same things – food, music, animals – laughing at the same jokes, decrying cruelty and injustice. She realised, with something of the surprise of discovering a long-lost treasure, that she loved Alex, not as a big brother, but as a woman loves a man, with her whole heart and soul. She wondered how she could have been so blind not to have realised it before.

‘I love you, Sasha,’ she said, snuggling up to him in the narrow, lumpy bed. Downstairs someone was playing a tune on a scratchy gramophone and someone else was knocking a nail into a wall. ‘I think I always have.’

‘And I love you too, sweetheart, and I don’t think it, I know it. I always have and always will, however long or short my life.’

‘Don’t say that, Alex, please don’t.’

‘Say what? That I love you?’

‘Not that, say that as often as you like, I love hearing
it. I meant about life being short. It frightens me.’

‘Then we shall both have to live to a ripe old age.’ It was said light-heartedly but both knew the precarious position they were in. If only they could find Yuri. If only he could be restored to her, she would be so happy and they could leave.

The search for him continued at a slower pace. She was resigned to the fact that it was going to take time and tried to be patient, writing long letters to Sir Edward and receiving some in reply, which made her feel more cheerful. Winter came and the snow hardened in the streets, bringing out the sleighs and sleds. People went about huddled in so many clothes it was sometimes difficult to recognise who was beneath the layers.

Alex was often involved with other matters which took him away from her for days at a time. He never said what he was doing but it was nothing to do with the search for Yuri or he would have told her about it. Something was going on, something dangerous; she could feel it in her bones. And worry for Alex’s safety did battle with her overriding need to find her baby.

She could not bear to be left alone in the apartment and would spend her time trudging about the city in her felt boots. Her previous stays had been so short she had seen nothing of it, but now, especially on days when Alex left her, she saw the city as it really was. It was a mixture of old and new, the ornate and the downright shabby, wide boulevards and narrow alleys, huge characterless apartment blocks like the one in which she and Alex lived, churches and monasteries which were being used for a number of purposes unconnected with religion. Then there was Red Square and the Kremlin with its great red walls
which housed the government offices; palaces and churches whose domes had once been crowned with golden crosses – now only one could be seen, atop the beautiful St Basil’s Cathedral, somehow saved from destruction; the Arbat, once the abode of the wealthy, whose mansions had been converted to communal living; and street markets and GUM, the department store.

But sightseeing was not what was in her mind as she roamed the city, looking for children’s hospitals and orphanages where she produced a snapshot of Yuri which elicited nothing more than a shake of the head and the familiar ‘
Ewo nyeto
’. In case of war, children were being evacuated to the east and she stood and watched the snaking lines of them, looking lost and bewildered, waiting to be taken away in trucks. But there was no Yuri, though she annoyed the children’s caretakers by peering closely at the babies being carried by the older children.

When she wasn’t doing that she was shopping, which meant queueing for hours on end for potatoes, bread, onions, lard and perhaps a few sausages; anything with which to make a meal. There was a great deal of panic buying and prices doubled day after day as supplies became scarcer. Sugar, flour, tinned goods, dried peas, cooking oil and fuel all disappeared off the shelves as war seemed inevitable. It was all the talk in the queues, though there were still some who believed the non-aggression pact would hold. Russia, they said, was too big and too powerful to be attacked.

Alex did not like her wandering about on her own and was afraid she would be picked up for interrogation. Everyone was getting more and more jittery and looking for traitors everywhere. And women were being directed to help build defences. He didn’t want that to happen to
her. ‘Darling, you must go back to England, it’s not safe for you here,’ he told her, when winter turned to spring, the snow disappeared and a little sunlight entered their room through the tiny window. ‘I don’t trust Hitler to honour the non-aggression pact. He’s driven our forces out of France and is cock-a-hoop. Now he’s free to turn his attention towards the east. He wants the whole of Poland, not half of it. Russia isn’t going to stand for that and there’ll be all-out war.’

‘I can’t go, Alex, you know I can’t. There’s Yuri …’

‘I’m afraid you must. I cannot always be with you and I shan’t have a moment’s peace knowing you are here alone. I promise I will continue to search for Yuri. The minute I know anything I will let you know and find a way of bringing him to you.’

‘You mean you aren’t coming too?’ She couldn’t believe that he would calmly send her away.

‘I can’t. There is work for me to do here.’

‘What work? Are you a spy?’

He smiled a little grimly. ‘Don’t ask, Lidushka, please. I’ll arrange for someone I trust to escort you safely home.’

‘But London has been all but destroyed by German bombs, it says so in the papers. I wouldn’t be any safer there.’

‘The papers exaggerate. Besides, London isn’t Upstone. You should be safe enough there. As soon as I’m free to come, I’ll follow.’

She wept and wept, which wrung his heart, but he would not give in. He almost dragged her, silent and numb with misery, to the British Embassy, an imposing building on the bank of the river overlooking the Kremlin, where he gave her into the care of Lieutenant Robert Conway, a naval
attaché who was being recalled. Robert’s father, Henry, had been a great friend of Sir Edward’s and Lydia had met him once or twice in happier times. Tall, fair-haired and unfailingly cheerful, he was going home to active service.

Once the arrangements had been made, Robert left them alone to say goodbye. They stood facing each other, unable to put into words what the parting meant to them. Alex opened his arms and she flung herself into them. ‘Alex, Alex, I can’t bear it. Let me stay.’

He hugged her and kissed her. ‘No, sweetheart, I can’t. It is for your own good. I will come back to you, you see, and I might even have Yuri with me.’

Empty words, she knew, but she took comfort from them. The alternative, that she would never see him or her son again, just didn’t bear thinking about. Gently he put her from him and left the room without looking back.

Lydia was so steeped in misery on that journey home, she remembered it as a series of unconnected images. Robert was always cheerful and kind, taking her elbow to guide her, encouraging her to eat when she thought food would choke her, talking to her gently when she needed conversation, remaining silent when she did not want to talk.

They travelled north to Murmansk where a Royal Navy ship was waiting to take on British citizens who wanted to leave: engineers and businessmen, families who had been resident in Russia for many years, some who had arrived after 1917, wanting to help build a perfect state. It hadn’t happened and now their loyalties to the country of their birth had been revived.

The great distances between places in Russia made journeys tediously long, but every mile they travelled
had been taking her a mile further from Alex, and as the train sped between Moscow and Novgorod, she wished it would slow down, or better still, stop and take her back. Novgorod was an ancient city whose cathedrals, churches and monasteries seemed to have escaped the Bolshevik destruction, but whether that was an illusion she did not know. They didn’t stop long enough to find out.

One night there in a very indifferent hotel, and they were on their way again. Forests of oak, ash, birch and conifers hemmed them in and blotted out the landscape as they travelled north. Lydia found her eyelids growing heavy and succumbed to sleep, her head on Robert’s shoulder. She stirred when they slowed down at Petrozavodsk where Robert left her to buy food and drink for them at the station. She ate it with little appetite.

By the time the train chugged to a halt in Murmansk she felt tired, dirty and sweaty. The port, once nothing more than a fishing village, was navigable throughout the winter owing to a quirk of the Gulf Stream, and so the last tsar had made it into a naval base for his Northern Fleet. They went straight from the railhead to the harbour and hurried on board just as the ship was sailing.

The weather was atrocious, with squally ice-cold rain and mountainous seas. Like many of the passengers she was sick and stayed in her bunk, but had recovered sufficiently to go on deck the day they were attacked in the North Sea by a lone German bomber. As its bombs landed unbelievably close, sending up huge columns of water, Lydia thought her last hour had come, but in her state of misery viewed the prospect with a kind of indifference. The ship’s guns were firing all the time, causing a great din, but eventually the bomber veered off, leaving the ship’s crew to assess the 
damage, which was thankfully slight, and they continued to Scotland where they berthed in Leith, cold and fearful and glad to be on dry land again.

Here they were questioned about who they were, why they were coming to Britain, and if they had relatives who would take them in. Lydia’s connection with Sir Edward and the fact that she was escorted by Robert stood her in good stead and she was allowed to continue her journey, though others were detained. From Leith they went to Edinburgh and from there to London by train, and then on to Upstone Hall and she was home. Home at last. Without her son and without the man she loved.

A few days later she was summoned to the Foreign Office for debriefing. Because British officials living in Russia were chaperoned wherever they went and only saw what the Soviet government wanted them to see, they did not get the full picture and were not able to talk to the people. They relied on spies to inform them – spies like Alex, because she had realised that was what he had been doing in Russia besides looking after her and getting her out safely. What a terrible burden she had placed on him.

She was questioned long and hard about why she had gone to Russia in the first place and asked to describe in minute detail everything she had seen: army movements, guns, factories, what the people were thinking, wearing and eating. She did not think she had been able to tell them much, but they accepted what she said, perhaps because she was open about it and also on account of her being Sir Edward’s daughter.